For $6800/each it better be something more than an old L lens in a new housing
Exactly... A great cine lens and a great DSLR lens have different priorities. Here are a few that matter to Cine.
No focus shift - when we say 20ft, we mean 20ft.
No curvature of field - again, so the plane of focus is where it says it is.
Edge to edge sharpness - unthinkable to shoot the opening sequence of WITNESS (the wide landscape where the grasses ripple in the wind) with a lens that's soft in the corners.
No lens breathing when pulling focus - we need to shift focus mid-shot to direct attention at the action. If the framing changes with focusing distance or the focus then that's not great.
We want an image that "pops" when it's sharp, especially in dialogue scenes or crowded city street scenes, again to direct attention. This is one reason directors like the "Zeissy" look. Some say it's "microcontrast", whatever that is. I'll go with "pops".
No color fringing whatever. Tidying up a single slide in post production is one thing, 25fps multiplied by hours and hours of shot footage is entirely different. Superachromats preferred.
Don't have to worry about pixel peepers as much in a movie.
Apertures with lots of rounded blades, to give perfectly round specular blurs. Smooth (non-clicky) aperture controls because intermediate values are often used.
Huge zoom ratios at constant T stop, 10x is a good starting point. 100x lens ratios for TV cameras do exist. Did the designers of the new zooms choose to give up the full-frame image circle in return for some other characteristic - like no breathing or a constant T. number?
I didn't mention focus staying constant while zooming (which stills photographers like), we try to avoid those, they're nauseating, unless you're Spielberg and it's a 45 second travelling shot from a crane.
I'll be interested to see how many of these characteristics we'll get for our $6800.
It's been said these are low production run lenses. I see a large market coming from the roll-out of multichannel digital TV and IPTV across Asia-Pac countries to make quite a useful business that Canon won't less pass them. It's less Hollywood, more Bollywood, China and SE Asia.